


And We Are Still Such Lost Creatures

by Deviation



Series: The Edge of the World [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Post Synthesis, Synthesis Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:05:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deviation/pseuds/Deviation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One decision echoed throughout the Galaxy, touching every life, synthetic and organic, and changing it into something different, something other. This is a Brand New World and The Shepard's name is written in every history book across the stars. This is a Brand New World; for better or worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And We Are Still Such Lost Creatures

 

 

  
_I witness the ones who are left behind,_  
 _crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise._  
 _They have punctured hearts._  
 _They have beaten lungs._  
“The Book Thief”-Markus Zusak

 

* * *

 

She throws herself of the ledge and falls falls falls into the green light below, and like those poor colonists at the collector base a lifetime ago, her body breaks down, disintegrates and reintegrates into something new, something other, something more than less than human. Faces flash in her mind, she sees Mordin and Joker and Anderson and Hacket and ThanThaneThaneThaneThane

 _So_ , she thinks as she is consumed, _This is dying._

And then the galaxy changes.

\--

There are children on a small colony on the edge of what was once Batarian space. Their little colony has been through a lot, raids and slavers and Reaper invasions. But there are children and they run through the tall grasses and climb the trees whose branches curl downwards, reaching for the soil. The colony is large now, a tourist attraction dedicated to some lady who died a couple of years ago. But the children here care not, they only know play and happiness and the darkness is such a distant nightmare only half remembered that laughter comes easy to them.

In the colony, the city, buildings are rising above the land like the alien gods who help rebuilt them. The older ones are here, helping rebuild, selling wares, crying in the street for what once was. It is a city as any other with pain and sorrow and happiness. They speak the name of a dead women with reverence and awe as though most of them didn’t remember when she was just a little girl with scabby knees who sometimes would snitch apples from Mrs.Morrison (dead with the first wave of Reapers two years ago), the girl who laughed too loudly and talked to much and was generally met with fond exasperation at best. The little girl’s grown face marks the flag the flaps in the wind atop the tallest building: embroided with crimson thread on wheat gold. The face that launched a million ships and united a galaxy; the people walk and talk and speak her name with awe The Shepard.

In the field the children laugh and play.

\--

Pinnacle of evolution or not there are still bars in existence in life post Shepard and there is a Turian in one right now. Everyone knows who he is; he never pays for a drink these days- not that it’s so easy to get drunk these days either which is just one of the reasons it’s fallen out of favor with, well, the entire galaxy. But still, he comes and sits at the bar, sometimes accompanied by a Quarian but usually alone and he’s always given a wide berth. And on the eleventh hour he always, without fail, raises his glass wordlessly and downs it in one go before leaving as steadily as he arrived.

Eventually enough years will pass that the Turian will cut back his visits to weekly, monthly, and, eventually, yearly. And someday he will bring young and hopeful officers to this bar and he’ll talk for hours upon hours about a certain lady who saved the galaxy a couple of times and the part this particular Turian played in it-but beyond one night of stories this Turian will teach the same lessons that one woman taught him once and continued to beat into his head until they stuck. The Galaxy may be born again but Turians are still Turians and this particular Turian, no matter how bad at being one he may be, will dedicate his life into honoring the memory of the fallen and ensuring that the name is never forgotten. Someday, this Turian will be Primarch of a great people and he will lead with the same defiance and gumption and kindness that he learned from another.

But today, today is for drinking and remembering and mourning.

\--

Fifty years post Final War the Salarians go extinct.

The Great Evolution was not a miracle, it was science and synthesis and _energy_ ; it was never going to fix everything. Organic and Inorganics are still separated by a distinct line-it’s just a little blurrier then it was before. And the Salarians were always the most finicky race, their clutches too sensitive to temperature change and chemical change and atmospheric change, thus The Final War decimated their already small numbers into one that couldn’t recover fully, no matter how intelligent or advanced or dedicated they were. The entire galaxy mourns the loss, feeling the emptiness deep within; not quite telepathy but an awareness that others exist outside of one’s self.

By contrast the Krogan have matched the other species combined in terms of numbers. They plunder worlds for resources, trying to keep up with their population while the rest of the galaxy watches, unable to help or hinder. Perhaps, if the Urdnot clan had remained in power all would be well _(you can’t have thought that synthesis equated to peace-that murder and mayhem would simply cease to be)_ but they didn’t and now the Krogan are burning themselves out.

The last Salarian to die went by the name of Mordin Sanctus, a great philosopher and musician, so named after the great hero from The Final War. Mordin is also the most popular name for female Krogan; the rest of the galaxy is pretty sure that it’s a coincidence.

\--

There once was a woman who was genetically perfect in every way. She was cocky and she was not kind but she was good and that’s all that mattered to another woman, once, one whom the perfect one lent some stolen time. The Great Evolution made this perfect woman even more perfect: stronger, faster, better then ever before. Beyond perfect in every way with no way to pass on those genes without imitating her own birth (still not quite perfect enough, are you?).

Her sister died in the war.

She killed herself a year later. She was not the first. She was not the last.

\--

There is a man who thrives after the change, who helps the galaxy adapt to their upgrades, who explains how to control it, how to find one’s self again after becoming something more. Where once he was weak and broken and tortured he is now stronger, confident, like the lame made to walk again in the old stories. He was always what they would become, was always something more then, something less then human. His brother recognized it, the illusive man recognized it, and the kind woman who saved him recognized it too. He becomes a leader of the people, strong and kind, and he leads the humans to greatness once more-helps them adapt faster than any other species .

He thanks The Shepard by counting the number of days since she changed everything.

\--

Sometimes the good doctor drinks and drinks and drinks until she is very very drunk; which is saying something when one considers the brand new world. They were so close, so close, to getting through the battle with no fatalities at all, but with every ship you do lose a couple, the good doctor would know.

This new world, this brand new world, it’s displaced a lot of people. People are lost, jobs have been invalidated by the changes, the galaxy is scrambling to find a new normal, a new way to live peacefully, trying to understand what has happened. In a few years they might not even need doctors anymore, not with the results that scientist are showing on just how far these changes go. In a few years the good doctor won’t matter anymore, to anyone.

Not even Joker.

Sometimes, sometimes the good doctor curses Shepard’s name to the skies but most of the time she thanks her, over and over again, because, gods, the look on Jeff’s face when he said, dazed and confused and scared and so, so happy, “There’s no pain.” She’s a doctor, it’s in her blood, in her bones, in everything she does and she doesn’t know how to be anything else and she is unbelievably happy that so much suffering has been relieved from the galaxy.

Serran Ice Brandy is still a delicacy, if not for much longer; the good doctor raises her glass in a salute to the Commander.

\--

“…People are going to see another day! Can’t you understand how unbelievable that is? How miraculous that is? Have you idiots already forgotten that just three days ago we were pinning our hopes on a concept we didn’t even know would work? You ungrateful bastards, look around you! Look at how many people are still fucking breathing when by all rights we should be fucking dead right now! I don’t know what the fuck Commander Shepard did but we’re alive!

We are _alive_.”

\--

The last of a species walks the scorched Earth. He is anger, hatred and death: he is vengeance personified, the rage of a dying people. He feels the changes within his body and is disgusted, he sees his enemies, his sworn enemies that his people died to kill, rebuilding what they destroyed and he is angry. The Commander had promised, promised, that she was to destroy the Reapers, that she would ensure that no cycle would fall as his did. If the human were not already dead he would hunt her down himself and slowly draw it out for her.

He is angry, he is lost, he is without purpose.

But worse, worse than all of this, is that he is alone. He is the last now, truly the last, who knows what Prothean language sounds like, the last who can truly understand just how capable the Reapers are of destroying everything. His people will be forgotten now, he will be forgotten. Their vengeance means nothing. And still, he cannot fathom why; why would the Commander do this, let the creatures that killed countless lives live? He walks the Citadel, he sees the people rebuilding, the Reapers rebuilding, and everyone acts as though the war was a thousand years ago instead of just a scant few months. Why?

Why?

A child runs past, laughing, it is a good sound, pure and light and loud. The children of his cycle had no reason to laugh and when they did it was quiet and short lived for fear of being over heard. He watches the child join a group of others, they run and play amongst the wreckage. He stops to stare at them, watching something he was once sure would never happen again. The first child who laughed falls, scrapes his knee and begins to cry and yet he stays. He is no parent, there are far worse wounds then a scraped knee to be crying over, but still he stares as moments later a Geth walks toward the child. He tenses, had twitching towards his rifle, blood pumping fast within his veins as the Geth kneels before the child and

Places medigel on the wound.

There is a short conversation after that but he hears none of it. Why would a Geth carry medigel? Why would it stop to help at all? There is no reason, no purpose behind such an action, when not even another organic would stop to help the child. So why would a Synthetic? A memory comes to him them, of the Commander and himself, when there was still so little hope for the galaxy, and the one called Legion inhabited the ship. The commander was always idealistic. Naïve. The Commander would preserve life, all life, where she could, when she could, especially when it seemed there to be no other choice. She would have died a swift death in his cycle for such a view-there is no room for idealism in war. Except that there was, here, this cycle. Why?

No one knows yet what happened on the crucible. Everyone who would know is dead. But Javik can imagine. He can see it, almost, when he reaches his senses deep within the Citadel. He can sense desperation and a choice and the resignation and the determination. And he knows the Commander, perhaps better than anyone, even Doctor T’soni. They understand war and loss and choice in ways the others do not. He knows how she longed to save as many as she could-how her pain permeated every corner of the Normandy when she couldn’t. The loss that hollowed her out and the desire for no one to feel the same.

He stares at the Geth but it does not look his way; instead heading towards a fallen support beam. The child is once more laughing amongst her peers, running through the destruction as though it were a playground. There is laughter filling the air, coloring it with life. So much life.

Perhaps he can understand after all.

( _Everyone_ -she whispers, less than a thought, more than a memory- _I’m going to save everyone_ )

\--

Kolyat is not and has never been an idiot. He knew from the moment he first saw his father that there was something between him and The Commander. It was so obvious that there was something between them, even then _(He is young and his parent love eachother-they stare at eachother as if the other gave life to the sea)_. He was so angry in the beginning; so quick to hate everything his father did and disregard all of his words.

And then he came back, back to the citadel and back to Koylat and there was something that was broken within him then, a new break that was no less deep or painful then the old _(he remembered those eyes)_. When he asked his father responded, “The Commander has been taken into custody,” and he could hear it, hear it the way any Drell could, the quiet pain there, the mourning, because he knew, then, that he may never see her again.

Of course Koylat remembers his father from before, when he was never home except when he was and how he was always so happy. Koylat remembers the quietness that was there after his mother died, remembers the strange stillness and hours upon hours of silence _(his father felt like death-the sea before the great storms and he was afraid)_. Moving like a ghost, never speaking never interacting with anyone until one day he too disappeared from Koylat’s life without a sound. Now, Koylat understands, knowing what his father did, he understands that his father was mourning, that his father was raised a killer, and that a mourning killer would be no man who could raise a child.

Briefly Koylat was jealous of the Commander, but that soon passes. He had not gathered much from his father but he knew that whatever life he lead before the Commander was a cold and empty one and Koylat quickly came to appreciate what the commander was to his father. Often in those months they spoke of his mother, but more often the spoke of Sheppard. His father had wanted him to understand what he saw in her and he did, growing fond of the way she brought smiles to his father’s face or the way the odd memory would bring laughter back, however brief and painful it might have been.

Koylat mourned his father when he died, still mourns him today, but he is a Drell and he had time spent with his father and many restless nights to come to terms with what was happening. Commander Shepard? It was obvious that she had not expected to find him alive at all, but to find him and then to lose him again so suddenly _(it always rains on Kahje)_?

To most species, humans are very unemotional: they have no dual tones like the Drell or the Turian, they have no scents like the Elcor or Salarians or lights like the Hanar or even natural biotic fields like the Asari. At that moment though there was no doubt that the Commander mourned deeply like he had once mourned his mother, like his father mourned his mother _(“Don’t let them! Stop them! Why weren’t you-!”)_.

This brand new world they live in, one without Commander Shepard or his father or _(his mother laughs like rain-)_ the mass relays is one filled with fear and uncertainty but there is also something maybe like hope far off in the horizon. He wonders what they might think, the Commander and his father, of this new world they’re building day by day, moment by moment. He wonders if they’re happy, wherever they are.

_(His father is dead and the woman he loved touches her trembling hand to his eyes, shutting them gently. She is lost to the world now-Koylat remembers the look in her eye the stillness in her person, in her breath, from another time so long ago when he was young and angry and unable to understand why. She asks the question in a tone that knows the answer but he answers anyway. She turns back to his father and she speaks, “Meet you across the sea,”. Beyond his own mourning and his heart breaks for her._

_When news of her death reaches Koylat months later he is not surprised)_

He likes to think that they are.

\--

The beings which used to be husks die are alive and they are in pain, constant unending pain, their new sentience bringing with it pain and pain and more pain. Nothing anyone does helps, no amount of drugs an ease it or therapy untwist the warped muscles of the unnatural. No matter the original species the results are the same: unending, unbearable pain with no reprieve. The husks are too organic to feel nothing and too synthetic to die.

It takes two weeks for the mercy killings to start. It takes two months until the last husk, a Banshee, is put out of her misery.

This Brand New World is already stained by bloodshed and death-night falls across the galaxy with no evening star in sight. No one knows what happened on the Crucible but her name is still cursed across the Galaxy, the one who shepherded in death.

\--

There are statues of her being built on worlds across the galaxy. People are coming forward with stories of her, members of every species from all sections of the galaxy come forth with stories, tid-bits that never made the news feed before-and the galaxy is amazed, is in awe of this woman who saved them. They marvel at her kindness, her fairness, her passionate hatred of injustice. Slowly, she stops being a human, stops being a woman, stops being a living being at all. She becomes a concept, something larger than life, an angel, a saint, a savior who rose from the ashes of her own death and fought to unite the galaxy and won. Her name is spoken of in awe and reverence, children of all species are named after her with the wish that they will grow to be something similar, some day. The statues of her grow ever larger, ever taller, putting her above all others, less then a person and more of a concept.

Her name is in every History Book, her image on every planet, her legacy in every strand of DNA of all living beings everywhere. The idea of her will not be forgotten.

_(some of the details have been lost in time; it all happened so very long ago)_

\--

Many years pass before balance is more or less restored; when there is equality and the Galaxy is as close to peace as it can ever be. So much knowledge that was once lost has been found once more, so many lives saved that would have perished otherwise. Diseases have been cured, understanding has been found and people are finally settling into their new forms.

There are still difficulties; the galaxy has not suddenly become perfect, the chalkboard wiped clean. People still die, still feel pain, still mourn; misfortune doesn’t cease simply because the galaxy changes. There is still murder and mayhem and chaos. Some worlds have broken out into war, fighting over what everything means, scared and trying to hide it by scorching the earth and salting the remains. But there is also peace and understanding to be found when enough effort is put into it. Every species works towards that goal, to honor the fallen and remember that they can live only because others’ bodies made up the stepping stones. They try to understand, try to see the world the way others do, they try and that is more than what can be said of before the Final War (No other cycle has ever achieved what this one did; none of them thought to try).

 

It is difficult. All things worth keeping are.


End file.
